sunday. december o9 2oo7

ok here's a double-post to make up for november. first off, today is a day of reflection for me. i appreciate how much has happened in such a short period of time. i hope that God is blessing this, and he is pleased. alright the last post was school related. let's see if i can talk about stuff outside of that. zanzibar this upcoming week is gonna be used for reviewing for finals. the following week is finals, and then we go on break. last year, i sat in a house for weeks going nowhere. this year, i thought maybe it'd be nice to get out kenya. so a few of us decided that we're gonna head down to zanzibar. it's a city along the coast of tanzania. from dec26-jan2, we'll be chillin on a beach. i wonder how many celebrate on a beach for christmas and new years. it'll definitely be interesting. two things come to mind for me regarding this trip. #1 i'm looking forward to getting a tanzania stamp in my passport. for me, i get a kick outta stuff like that. it's like collecting baseball cards. #2 i'm beginning to feel self-conscious about not having rock-hard abs. being on a beach with no shirt? my enjoyment of coke and chocolate is definitely gonna show. moving? currently it's pending, but 2nd semester i'm very likely to be living in a different place. i may move into an apartment with another prospective teacher. our 1st grade teacher is leaving. kayla, our athletic director, will be taking that position. as a result, we have no AD. however the school is looking to hire someone for the 2nd semester. he's a guy, so most likely we'll be rooming together. i would've never guessed relocation this year, but hey it makes life interesting. decisions decisions... i'm not sure how many of you know, but i submitted my request to stay for a third year. i hope to come back next year. i feel that ministry is not done here. it's actually very difficult to measure ministry goals when it comes to building relationships with youth and caring for their spiritual growth. where do you draw the line and say i'm done? before at fbcc, the line was drawn at a graduation of a certain class. strangely enough, i ended up leaving one year before. it's very unpredictable. i just let God lead. he wants me back, so i'm staying. adventures in babysitting this past week, i slept in three different homes. i wonder how many people out there can relate to this. we need to start a club or something. here's where i was this week: monday (my place), tues-wed (kamalesons), thurs (my place), fri-sat (andrews). the kamalesons have 3 boys. their dad is indian. their mom is half white half black. the andrews coincidentally enough live directly across from the kamalesons. they live on a world vision compound. joe is white and in 8th grade. ricky is kenyan and in 1st grade. i took them out saturday to a big christmas bazaar. i can't imagine what people were thinking when they saw us. the asian guy, white boy, and kenyan boy walking together. it's definitely a strange sight to see if you don't know us. any way, the bazaar was basically a bunch of booths set up around a horse racecourse. there were alot of things to buy, but they were expensive. most of the sellers were white kenyans (british). i didn't buy anything, but the boys bought little things for relatives for christmas. we got there around 10am. we ate lunch around 1pm and got cotton candy on the way out. i think that was the first time i've ever seen orange cotton candy. at our school that day, they were having a cookie contest. ricky wanted to enter the contest, so friday afternoon we made cookies with frosting and sprinkles on them. so we got to school around 2pm for the cookie contest. we were early, so the kids played around while waiting for others to arrive. i was so tired from walking around at the bazaar that i passed out in a room in the office. later i woke up and tried some cookies. that wasn't such a good idea for my stomach. you can only eat so many different cookies at a time. we left around 330 and headed home. the rest of the time was valuable time. my allergies with these cats at their house was acting up, and it just got worse and worse. it went from runny nose to coughing to pounding headache. but i hung in there. it was worth it. it's always worth it. i'm sure most of you have forgotten what i look like, so here's a picture of me, joe, and ricky. oh yes, i have to explain that shirt. my landlord and i share the same househelp. she mixes our laundry alot. she folded my load and left it for me. in this load, i notice this polo shirt. i thought it was pretty cool. so i figured since i probably wouldn't run into my landlord while with joe and ricky this weekend, i could get away with wearing it. btw totally wrong to be just wearing someone else's shirt. for the record, i've gotten this shirt in my load many times. i've been passing up on it. i snapped this time. while i was at the bazaar, i ran into my landlord's wife. she happened to have her own booth set up. i freaked out. i tried really hard to carry on a conversation without showing any sign of nervousness. she didn't say anything, but i still dunno if she went home and told him. hahaha i'm in trouble. to tell you the truth, i used to think these polo shirts with the giant polo guy was way too preppy. for some reason, it just looked really cool when i put it on. so for christmas, you know what to get me. jk they're probably craxy expensive. brown shirt with red logo would be a cool design. i dunno if it exists, but i can fantasize, right? ok that's all for now. ::: :::

saturday. december o8 2oo7

wow only one post for all of november! that's definitely an all-time low, especially since there's thanksgiving and my bday in that month. i don't exactly know why i haven't posted anything. whenever people ask me how things are gong, i just say that i'm busy. i guess nothing particularly interesting or picture-worthy has been going on. or maybe my definition of interesting is different from yours. i live it every day, so maybe i don't realize it. to solve that problem, i'm just gonna talk about everything. it's better than having nothing, right? virus alright let's start with school stuff. during november, our school computers were invaded by a virus. it was quite clever actually. a webpage would pop up and whenever you tried looking for it, it didn't appear. so it was a hidden file. whoever made it disabled the ability to go to folder options and show the hidden files. also, control panel was taken away from the start menu. the registry also couldn't be accessed. the funny part was the webpage. because of presidential elections coming up, it was a fake campaign ad to vote for someone for president. i was told there were 3 versions of this virus going around, one for each presidential candidate that is running. we got the kibaki one. he's the current president, and he's running for re-election. rumor is the opposing parties created it. i'm guessing it's someone out there who doesn't like any of the candidates. the most powerful part of the virus is its blacklist. it was created to target popular anti-virus programs. it completely disabled avg at our school. on someone's laptop, it disabled norton. it was passed around with a flask drive at our school. i'm so glad i didn't use mine for awhile. ok this can't be that interesting for non-computer nerds. moving on... C is good? i do remedial teaching for two boys in the morning. we're focusing on 6th grade math. at the moment, they're very proud that they got C averages. i can't really knock em b/c they came up from an F. but i keep pushing them and telling them that i believe in them. i honestly think they can at least get a B. it just takes time and focus. nerds unite! in geometry, we're doing proofs right now. remember how annoying it was to memorize theorems, definitions, and postulates? and then writing out proofs for stuff you already logically know the answer to? yea that's what they're doing right now. this was NOT my favorite part in geometry. alas, i am here teaching it. but i guarantee you they will become nerds quickly. you should hear them now shout out answers like "vertical angles theorm" or "cpcf theorem" or "parallel lines => AIA congruence theorem". it's great. go nerds! fake network in 7th grade computers, they're using a program called typing master. we have new computers but no real server in place. the 20+ computers are all connected in groups. each group has its own hub. to psuedo-network them, one computer from each group connects to the other group's hub. it's weird. all i know is it only allows us to run 7 comps with typing master at a time. so i have only 1/3 of my class working at a time. they need more practice. we got a new server from dell, and it's been sitting there. no one has configured it. sigh. Word words 8th grade computer is going well. they've been going through microsoft word this semester. like kate commented in my last post, there is alot of terminology to memorize. the final is gonna be interesting. since they can't take the books home, they had to copy all the terms in each chapter. i hope they're disciplined enough to study. next semester we start on excel acts 4-7 boys bible recently finished presenting their projects on what they will do for the kingdom of God. it was fun hearing about everyone's future career goals. some of them turned in crappy projects, and others put alot of work into it. their final will cover acts 4-7. i gave them a thorough review last week. again, i can only hope for discipline to study this upcoming week. y = ax^2 + bx + c we're currently doing quadratics in alg2. who remembers how to complete the square? who remembers the quadratic formula? if you do, i'm proud of you. this is probably the part of algebra i'm best at. anna's doing well...i think...hehe. two other students will be coming back next semester to take algebra2. i was recently notified that the three of them will switch to taking an online class. what the? i have no idea how that's gonna work with our 'awesome' internet. ::: :::